Guilty Crown – 05 Review

Shuu is a jerk and he has no qualms about using every possible opportunity to tell everyone that…

Guilty Crown 05: Cheating Is Also Appropriate Now

Shuu continues to disregard any notion of politeness or taking a hint when needed. As the girl in the wheelchair tries to make a fighter out of him everybody quickly realizes that Shuu is a failure in every sense of the word. Spending a whole episode failing at everything, I guess, everybody was pretty happy to hear how Shuu actually passed the final test – by cheating. And still everyone’s impressed. Because actually nobody could’ve passed that test which I think is very telling in terms of what secretly everyone wanted to happen. But he cheated and he won. And Shuu gets sentimental realizing that betraying these people might be not the gentleman-way of handling trust and loyalty.

Synopsis:
Shuu enters the terrorist’s hideout still unsure what to do with the device the evil wacko from last episode gave him. Gai explains to everone that he has a plan and has it pretty much all covered. There are 145 alternative plans and everybod needs to know all of them. Because Gai only wants supermen and superwomen on his team. And he tells Two-Wheels to train Shuu because right now he’s a complete loser. After training for some days everybody agrees – that Shuu will never be anything else but that actually. But still they set up a final test which nobody ever passed. Of course Shuu is about to lose, not because of the odds, though, but because he’s doing everything wrong that he could possibly do wrong (so it’s just like his normal life actually…!). But then he has the brilliant idea to – cheat! He runs to this dude and draws a Void out of him – which apparently is the kind of Void useful in his particular situation (how convenient!). Using the Void he passes the test and everybody applauds him reluctantly. Only Two-Wheels is all honey and soap telling him that it’s okay to cheat since using Voids is just the kind of shit Shuu would do.
On another note Gai is in trouble… Meh, actually, not really… but you should pretend to be surprised when it’s revealed in the next episode.

So… basically nobody likes you, Shuu… I know, tough shit but you can at least try to not be such an asshole all the time, can’t you?!

Review:
I have to admit: Shuu is a jerk. I don’t know how this show will ever convince me to root for this idiot. First he’s rude – and then he whines about people not liking him. But in the next minute he pities himself for being so rude in the beginning. That’s the kind of dialogue-progression that just calls for someone to tell him to shut up. And I know because I think that all the time when he opens his mouth. Especially this episode which is centered around Shuu getting emotionally involved with the terrorists.
It’s again one of the bad episodes, I have to say. It made a new mistake, I would say and that’s being utterly boring. This episode was a textbook-episode of just doing what every series in this situation would do without adding any substance to the whole thing. This episode sleepwalks through Shuu’s development telling you in a tired bored voice: Here’s the joke, here’s the emotional moment, here’s the awkward romance moment, here’s the jealousy-scene and so on. There’s no effort of any kind to be seen here. This is the passionless generic ‘Been there, done that’-approach. Guilty Crown isn’t doing itself much of a favour by being so generic that it’s not only becoming predictable to anime-fans but becomes boring for everyone.

Disappointment is probably the only reaction Shuu will ever get from his audience…

I already mentioned how Shuu again (!) took the cake for ‘worst character of this show’ easily by being such an asshole about everything. I understand when a character is sort-of anti-social and shy and all that… but Shuu is nuts! Really, that guy is insanely anti-social! He might have Aspergers Syndrome or some shit like that because he isn’t Rain Man (that’s Inori) but his social awkwardness borders on simply incapability to show empathy in any way. In this episode Shuu does everything wrong and hearing him talk shows you an atrocious lesson of how nobody should behave. The rest of the characters reacted accordingly to Shuu of course although my reaction would’ve been harsher at the end of the day because he has no redeeming value. He sucks at everything – except Void-related stuff.
And that’s how this episode has its decisive moment when Shuu is confronted by Steiner (the super-Mecha the terrorists own strangely). Okay, I have to admit that I had trouble understanding the logic of this scene. They get a new recruit like Shuu who sucks at everything – and his final test is doing something nobody has ever done before? This makes no frigging sense! He can’t succeed! And ignoring this point for a moment, if he has to succeed in this scene: Wouldn’t it be better that he’s doing it without his Void-abilities? I mean, the way this episode ends is telling you that Shuu is bad at everything – except Voids. And those are pretty much randomly generated. Shuu has no idea that he can draw stuff out of some teenager which will prove to be useful. Naturally he does exactly that in this fight, though, which bothered me also because I couldn’t believe that this guy who he got it from was 17. And we saw him talking to Shuu earlier about this but there wasn’t any hint that Shuu knew which Void he had, right? He spontaneously decided in the battle to give it a try. This is some really crappy storytelling Guilty Crown is doing here and I can’t say that I’m happy about it.
Another important point was that the terrorists have a plan – which also has a special name. It’s not any plan, it’s the Leucocytes-plan (go to Wikipedia if you want to know what those are, in short they are the good guys killing bad guys in your blood and they are really brutal)! And this plan involves everybody learning 145 alternative plans for all kinds of scenarios (perhaps they should wait a few years to finish preparing for all 145 possibilities). Okay, that’s of course the kind of exaggeration that’s simply hilarious because nobody would call that a plan. No one can think of 145 possible plans at once which are what will become necessary when they start executing this Leucocytes-Plan. I also doubt that 145 really are all the possibilities that could happen in reality. Besides there’s the old rule that no plan survives contact with the enemy and this plan smells of a good lack of improvisation. And it’s really hilarious to see exactly that happen in this episode. They don’t really waste time telling you how idiotic the notion of such a plan is.
Gai is in danger – or something. Of course we know that he’s not dead and the next episode may start with Gai trying to look cool while wasting the audience’s time with his long-winded explanations for why he’s not dead. At this point I don’t give a shit about stuff like that. I already know how this series treats its logic and it was made pretty clear that the series explains things when it wants to and only in a way that’s convenient for the story.

The fifth episode in one word: boring. This episode that wants to deal with Shuu becoming a terrorist and becoming an accepted member of the Funeral Parlor is simply ridiculous. Shuu’s unlikeable personality make all the dialogues of his a pain to watch. The rest of the cast are a gathering of generic one-note-characters. Only Inori is worse than all of them together. This episode actually made me hate the series even more. So I hope the series picks up again its action-story next episode and doesn’t dwell on Shuu too much from now on. He’s a jerk and I don’t care about him. But he’s the main-character which means that the story’s focus on Shuu was a stupid decision.

Agreed with all of the above. The main thing that I liked about this episode was at least Shu was realizing how much he sucks. And admittedly I liked the scene where he runs into Ayase and the conversation that results. “Too bad you like Inori.” “Well you like Gai, don’t you?” This show would genuinely surprise me if they ended up together. But its made a point in taking the most obvious route so far, so why change? -_-

And admittedly I liked the scene where he runs into Ayase and the conversation that results. “Too bad you like Inori.” “Well you like Gai, don’t you?”

Well, we knew that already so it wasn’t that great. But I guess it was indirectly a lol-moment because Shuu saying “But you like Gai, right?” sounded like “Hey, actually you’re just as pathetic as I am!”. Shuu definitely has a way with words if nothing else 😀 …

And what’s up with the blood transfusions?

You mean that smelly corpse in Gai’s room? Who knows…
But I had to wonder when Two-Wheels mentioned to Shuu how everybody knew that Inori goes into Gai’s room once each month. And she’s saying it like she agrees with Shuu’s pathetic fears that there’s something going on between them. Also, instead of denying Shuu’s remark why she doesn’t like the way they are together like that once a month, Two-Wheels just flusters although she should’ve made it clear that meeting once a month like that isn’t a romantic relationship so the real question would be why are they really meeting like that and why they have to be so pseudo-secretive about it… This bunch of terrorists seem far too trusting and naive in regards to Gai’s motives and background. A mole could see that Gai's hiding something because no ordinary idealistic terrorist would be that obsessed with starting the ‘perfect revolution’.

@Sandybell:

I actually liked this episode. While I do hate Shuu, I think the rest of the cast makes up for him.

I agree, except Inori and Gai of course. Those two aren’t that great. But the fact remains that all these side-characters are mainly personality-less stereotypes with little to no real characterization. There’s for example this girl with black hair… I have no idea where she has come from but she makes a few short appearances in this episode and every time we see her I was like “Who the hell is this person…?!”. Code Geass treated the less important characters of its cas as badly as this series does, it seems to me that Ichirou hasn’t really learned from his mistakes since he wrote Code Geass.

Honestly, Shuu acts more like a kid than a highschooler. No highschooler I ever knew is this socially inept! Even the nerdy me!

A rude, wimpy, stupid kid, though 😉 … Normal kids aren’t such assholes… They actually already have something similar to common sense.

why does inori must have sex with gai every once in a while. is it a requirement?
i bet gai do get all t he girls he want since he is the leader.
pity that shu, i bet he couldnt believe the shy inori get pounded by gai.

If anything I think that the most interesting scene would have been when they implied that Inori and Gai were having sex, but they essentially ruined that assumption 5 minutes later with that dialysis thing. I’m not keen of Shu as a character but I did feel bad for him for being so pathetic and then being deceived so easily by Inori. It would at least give the show a more mature tone to let it stand apart if they made a scenario where he has to compete as well as stop being a loser to get the girl who’s out of his league. Something along the lines of blue gender (great series in my opinion), where the main characters had if not other romantic love interests, sex with other people before coming around to each other and dealing with the tension between them.

Also agreed, that dark – light guy did not look under 17, no one in that organization really did aside from a few people. I mentioned last time that the rules were gonna cause more issues than help explain things, and things like that are essentially the inconsistencies I expected. I’ll admit I give shows a lot of leeway with the laws of nature for things that clearly aren’t provable, like supernatural elements, hyper advanced electronics and whatnot, or diseases that turn people into crystal monsters, but when a show exaggerates something that is physically possible to a ridiculous level, with no kind of impossible backing, or breaks its own set rules, I get nit-picky.
Simple, off topic example would be something like batman, I’ll accept that his enemies like killer croc can be mutants, or that poison ivy has psychic control over plants, but show me batman using a a pocket sized flamethrower to burn through a metal lock in 3 seconds flat and I throw a fit, well not really, lol.

So yea, I think the rules are gonna just be more pocket sized blowtorches to this series, but I accept that he can pull weapons out people that reflect their personalities.

I’m not keen of Shu as a character but I did feel bad for him for being so pathetic and then being deceived so easily by Inori.

I think pity isn’t something you should use to get sympathy from the audience. It’s simply something that doesn’t work without sufficient build-up. Pity can never make you care about a character, it only works because you already care for the character at this point. That’s why such stories have this underdog-atmosphere most of the time so that pity turns into something uplifiting and inspiring. Only in rare cases it’s good to see a gritty ‘Life is tough shit.’-message combined with pity (because some stories simply want you to feel the pain).
But with Guilty Crown there’s no sufficient build-up and Shuu’s suffering is just another way to mock him. Therefore any more suffering and I will actually start to laugh because Shuu is simply unlikeable at this point. He’s such a dull character at this point with his wimpy characterization handled like it’s all that matters for him. But there should be more to him than that or at least that’s what any reasonable characterization would try to do.

I mentioned last time that the rules were gonna cause more issues than help explain things, and things like that are essentially the inconsistencies I expected.

Even without the basic problems any ‘iron setting-law’ can bring to a story, I have to admit that the under-17-rule was particularly stupid because it makes no sense and it’s also an obstruction to many things. For example the majority of the cast is now bound to be 17 or younger simply to keep the Voids present in the story. Only in case they planned the cast to be like that in the first place the inclusion of this ‘iron law’ would make sense. Otherwise it was just a plain stupid idea.

Simple, off topic example would be something like batman, I’ll accept that his enemies like killer croc can be mutants, or that poison ivy has psychic control over plants, but show me batman using a a pocket sized flamethrower to burn through a metal lock in 3 seconds flat and I throw a fit, well not really, lol.

Well, for me the line is crossed when Batman for example had to fight a ‘Phantom of the Library’ in a gallery… Or remember the time when they shrank Batman to be Bat-Baby and he still kicked ass and was feared by the criminals? Christ, there’s stuff in these Batman-comics that will make your metal lock look like a stroke of genius… But hey, one good thing about this: If Guilty Crown actually sinks down to these levels it’ll be at least so bad that it’s good again 😉 .

So yea, I think the rules are gonna just be more pocket sized blowtorches to this series, but I accept that he can pull weapons out people that reflect their personalities.

Gee, I already forgot the part about the personalities… I mean, they don’t really take that part that seriously (except in the case of Inori of course) since there’s no real explanation what exactly the Void in this episode means. That guy actually never got a decent characterization to show us why his Void is what it is. It’s not that the series breaks its own logic, I think, it’s more like they simply don’t take the whole thing as serious as one would expect.

The only thing that ruined the whole series was knowing that Gai and Inori had sex a lot! That ruined it! Like how can a main character be with someone that got pounded by some dude that acts as his leader? I’d hate that! Just the image of Inori moaning from Gai’s dick! Like wow! Still the fighting and storyline is great except for the monthly sex =/

Do you really expect an highschooler who, from the evidences, has serious problem in interacting with people, to be a warrior in less than one week? You seriously lack maturity for this review. Consider yourself in his situation : you would be as pathetic as he is. And, by the way, winning at a battle is about being smart. Expect to defeat a pro soldier armed with machine guns with a stick dude.

No matter how much I see it, I don’t think Inori has monthly sex with Gai. I think every month or so, she just walks into his room and simply talks to him. If you keep watching the anime, you learn that there is a woman that Gai really loves that Inori strongly resembles. He even said that she was growing to look like her. When it shows the room, she is just sitting on the chair while he lays in the bed, with a bunch of tubes attached to his body.

I don’t think inoni slept with gai, he’s too cool of a character to take advantage of a young girl that he rescued off the street, it would feel like sleeping with your own child, I think that he keeps a secret that he himself is infected the virus and entrusted her with taking care of him because of their history and either way she’s a minor as far as I know and sleeping with a minor is illegal and morally wrong lol if I find out they been sleeping I rate it 0 bit if they don’t it’s a 10